The first hit was so shocking, Maksim barely felt it. The sound echoed in his head, and he only registered that it it was his own skull because his vision swung around with the blow. After that, his entire body felt like rubber. If there was adrenaline, it wrung every ounce of strength from his limbs. He didn’t fight back. Didn’t even try to retaliate, but even if he wanted to, he wouldn't know where to begin.

It was like slamming his knee into the coffee table, only instead of his knee, it was his face. and tingles flung all the way around his temples. His arms flung up defensively after that, but Pavel’s fist slammed into his ribs instead. He gasped as air escaped his body like a punctured balloon. He already lost just because he woke up that day, but when he was on his hands and knees, he tried to bury his face low. Above, Pavel ordered him to stand and take it, but when he didn’t immediately stand and take it, his hair was wrenched back and the decision made for him. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed the stranger watching. Part of Maksim’s hiding was sheer defense; the rest was mortal embarrassment. 

He tried not to groan when the paramedics helped move him to the gurney. At least it came out more as a grunt.

He waited in the warehouse until the ambulance was out of sight. As soon as it was, he called Zixin Kao.

“He’s on his way to the hospital,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Bet that was the highlight of your day, Ryker!” he laughed loud into the speaker.

“You won’t believe it, but Pavel Vasilev did it. Wouldn’t let me touch him,” he explained.

“No shit?” Zixin sounded impressed.

“No shit,” Ryker replied. If video was enabled, the heat in Ryker’s gaze would have been apparent.

“Your special guest on his way?” Ryker followed up.

“Indeed he is. You’ll like him. Real life of the party!” Zixin laughed again. The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Ryker.

“It’ll be a party for sure. I told him to bring no more than two guys. No idea who he will chose. Doubtful it’ll be the old man, though. I promised we’d bring the same,” Ryker said. Pavel seemed to want to keep all this quiet. Involving old man Konstantin would be like admitting there was a problem he couldn’t contain. He had too much pride for that; pride that made him weak and predictable.

Zixin snorted. “With you there, might as well be two-hundred. See you then,” he said and immediately ended the call.

Ryker slipped the wallet into a pocket. Zixin was right about that.

He left soon after.

True to his self-promise, the door alerted him to a delivery just as he was wrapping a towel around his waist. The shower was long and hot and he rubbed out a good wad built up after the last however long he’d been in prison. A giant case of beer had arrived, already chilled, and he hurried to the front door, water still dripping down his back when he opened it.

A delivery woman stood there with a dolly and three big boxes of bottles. She wore tight pants, a button down uniform shirt and a matching cap. Her eyes went a little wide when she realized the occupant was staring at her so immodestly dressed. He felt her eyes stick like a fly on paper to the web of scars that populated half his body.

He’d not even seen a woman the whole time in Butryka.

He reached out to take the handle of the dolly, but she interrupted.

“I have to do it, actually. Liability reasons. Where do you want it?” she pushed the dolly past him.

“Kitchen. Through there,” he pointed and followed.

The space wasn’t large. Ryker honestly spent little time here, but it was where he came to sleep, shower, fuck. The basics. Nor was it particularly rich. He had money, but when he spent it, it wasn’t on decor and fancy appliances.

She was busy moving the boxes off the dolly when he pulled a knife from the butcher block.

The power swarmed her head with the red that bubbled up from his arm. Then all he had to do was stand there as the girl’s face fell blank. On one hand, it was much faster to mind-control her, but on the other, he enjoyed at least a little resistance. Next time. He was feeling impatient.

The first crack of his palm on her skin was satisfactorily loud.

Hours later, he was feeling much more like himself. He might have taken things too far, but she’d not remember anyway. He had to clean up the blood though; not all of it was his.

It was during this time that he contacted HQ for intel on the current situation in the city. Shit must have been boring around Moscow with him off the streets, but the news of Yun Kao’s death stuck out like a bloody thumb.

Who the hell killed her? Now he was intrigued.

The usual contacts filtered out into the void, and soon enough, a message filtered back. He dressed and hurried out to make personal contact. Things were going to get interesting.

So I've been thinking about a device that limit's the OP of a channeler.  I'm thinking that it can only really limit their strength so I've been wondering how the OP in our world what strength really means.

Strength is how much power you can draw, and how long you can essentially channel -- in a nutshell.  Or at least that's how I envision the Strength number being represented.

Gonna use Nox as an example mostly because I know what he does and doesn't do lol.

Nox is maxed out at like 30 or 31.  Not overly strong in comparison.  But he's a Master at what he does do in most cases.

So if he draws max power and throws a fireball.  How does that differ if he say he only drew half his power, or 5% of his power? Is it just smaller, doesn't goes as far before fizzling out?

His skill doesn't change so what if it's more complex?  He typically can handle 3 different simpler weaves at the same time at about half his power?  Does being limited to only 5% of his power limit the number of flows he can handle?  Or is that pure skill?  If he drew all of his power and split flows could he handle more flows?  The more is definitely exponentially harder he's at his capacity at 3 as far as I'm concerned and won't ever do more, but it's a question on strength.

At dragonmount Strength (and Skill) determined what weaves you could and could not due.  And to further it Strength was also broken down into each of the 5 elements of the OP with a point buy system.  So we always knew what weaves we could or could not do based on our strength/skill levels.  I like our way better and am not suggesting we do anything with it.  I'm just curious as to what strength looks like.  Not so much against someone else, but what a person is capable of with the same skill level but with a limited strength cap.

Middle of the day. As it was just after lunch, Kaelan dropped a used food wrapper into the trash can on the way out of his office. He noted the time as he retrieved his personal Wallet from the oversized pocket of his lab coat then hung it neatly on a hook before locking up the office. It was one of several in his office, but many more were nearby. A series of technical clean-coats and another series of soiled-coats were stored in the laboratory, waiting in lockers near the front door and kept within the confines of their respective spaces to prevent cross-contamination.

An exchange of one coat meant he shrugged on another. A suit jacket, it was black, simple and still clean given he’d barely worn it the last two days. He’d not been home in 72 hours, and despite on-site employee bunks and showers, he was ready to venture to his actual apartment. The most recent experiment was at a natural lull. The data was being analyzed by AI on a massive cloud-database to run against other known codes. Which meant he had several hours to escape home, use his own facilities, trade clothes, and be back by nightfall.

He frowned to himself as the elevator doors opened on the lobby level. The space seemed to be brimming with bodies. Normally he wouldn’t mind. Scanners were taking biometrics even on their visitors but for the fact it wasn’t a straight shot to the exit. Normally he wouldn't mind except today they were blocking a speedy exit.

He was half-way spun through the revolving door when the epiphany hit him.

“Shit,” was all he said. A child on the other side of the glass who had been spinning the revolving door on endless loops gasped at the swearing. She then shook her head as though he was going to get in trouble once she told their teacher. First, that was when he realized that many of the bodies that blocked the lobby were short, loud and bouncy. Children.. great. And as he walked in a circle and emerged back into the lobby he’d just escaped, his gaze swept across those little heads to identify a series of adults with placards and signs. Teachers.. worse. Second, he realized he was going to have to traipse through the crowd all the way back to his office. Having just battled his way through them to leave, he was none too pleased at the prospect of doing so two more times. Less so now that he realized they were children and not merely short obstacles.

So he wasn’t going to.

He’d forgotten his computer bag in the office. It was small and fit across his body, but the device inside was necessary. As soon as the data was done computing he wanted to see the results. He had similar devices at home and he could possibly log into the accounts from there, but the program was powerful and the computer upstairs was the newest model. It would be slow as hell to attempt it on the older system, and he wanted to see the data the moment it was ready. Even if it meant walking out of the shower in nothing but a towel and soap dripping down his face. He had to see.

So he threaded around the edge of the milling bodies for a short-cut. Management frowned on their scientists using the staffer routes. It had something to do with.. well, he didn’t know exactly.. nor did he care. He had to cut through the museum, but there was a service corridor that the museum gift shop used to stock inventory - drinks, snacks, magnets that read |BUILD A BETTER YOU| for your refrigerator. He was swiping his badge on the key card when he heard his name.

“And this, boys and girls, is one of our most important scientists! Dr. Müller would you have a moment to say hello?”

He slowly looked over one shoulder, badge in hand, to behold the beaming smile of one of the museum tour guides. About thirty pairs of eyes were looking back at him.

Shit.

The sword of light of Nuada lay across his knees. Holed up in his tech room with about twenty holo-screens hovered in various sizes above the desk. Upon scratching his neck, he remembered he hadn’t shaved in two days. The neck beard was going to be glorious soon.

After scratching his throat, his fingers drummed the edge of the sword for about the thousandth time. Every single screen currently open represented a twisted meandering through countless rabbit holes of information. Swords, the celts, the Tuatha, mythology, hell even a few screens referenced optics and light rays. Channelers and weapons led no where. The dark web’s forums were dead ends. Half a day of reading about snake people and naga led to some fascinating conspiracy theories about snake alien abductions that Jaxen clearly believed was real, having been abducted himself. Twice. But did nothing to help him unravel the mystery of the sword's light powers.

Then there was the Ancient Power itself. For all the screens, there were more echoes of faded attempts lingering on the air like smoke. The sword partly glowed once with the probes, but Jaxen had yet to reproduce the effect. More importantly, the sword behaved like a regular sword. It was sharp though. He was able to slice an apple with it earlier.

Well, if the freaking sword of light of Nuada was just a sword that glowed once in a while, he might as well figure out how to use it. He watched a few videos on the techniques. Thought about getting a coach, too. Jaxen once took flying lessons for 6 months just so he could steal a private jet right out of its hanger. If he was going to carry around a sword, might as well look bad ass doing it. So down the rabbit hole of swordplay he delved.

Which was when an advertisement on the side of the currently playing video caught his attention. It was for a group meet up, but it was the hot girl in flowing clothes and fake pointy ears that caught his eye first. The fact she was holding a cool sword caught his eye second, and he had an idea.

Who knew most about magic swords? Fucking nerds did!

Which was how he ended up strolling straight up to a decorated table positioned at the edge of one of the lawns of Filevskiy Park.

Two guys looked up, laughing among themselves in their fake fantasy outfits. Their faux helmets were laid on the table. Foam weapons stacked alongside. Their tablets were lit up though. Lists of names and assignments filled the screens. Beyond on the grass loitered at least a hundred other people all dressed in every manner of time period, fantasy and class. Many wielded weapons of various value and quality. Others held wands. Jaxen had the feeling that he was the only one present with a real sword belted to his waist. Proud of that, he was.

He’d dressed for the occasion too. He wore a red tunic over a black undershirt. It was held at his waist with the complicated contraption that kept Nuada’s weapon swinging at his hip. Beneath were snug leather pants and motoboots. There were bracers on his forearms, but they were the extent of his accessories. He’d only had the morning to rapid-order something suitable. Besides, if he was going to hang out with nerds, he was determined to be the best one of them all.

The two guys running the registration looked him up and down. One eyed the hilt of Nuada’s sword and nodded in great approval, which made Jaxen smirk.

“Alright boys. I’m here to kick some ass. Do I need to sign up or something?”

There have been a lot of connections lately to current PCs with their past lives. We've always had a stance on the site about keeping these flashes or awarenesses symbolic, abstract, or unconsciously experienced by the POV character.

There has been a lot of interest in pursuing this phenomenon further of late. In our second decade of the first age, we are continuing to spiral toward cataclysmic change in the world. The universe is reactionary as a result or perhaps in anticipation of these events. 

Therefore, if you want to have more conscious awareness of your past lives, you have the freedom to explore that story. We only ask that its built into your character arc or connected to a story. For instance, rather than waking up one day remembering your past life, go through the process of describing a triggering event. How does your character react to what must be startling to uncover? What are the consequences? 

There are also mediums, psychics, and prophets in the world that might help you uncover these past lives.  

If you have any questions about the process or want to brainstorm ideas, please send me a DM anytime or post a response here. 

Good luck!

I'm adding the sirens as options for character classes and NPCs. Please see descriptions of them on the wiki here.

[[Continues Cruz's story from The Depths of Hell]]

The thump of the music was faint in the tunnel; it sounded quiet as a drifting pulse. Esper enjoyed the sensations of the Devil’s Lair, for the overwhelming emotion usually magnified into one great sea of feeling, and it felt glorious. People generally came here for the same reason after all. So the dancing between keeping an eye on the mark had been euphoric and senseless. Sweat sheened her skin still, and dampened the hair against her temple. A little push kept others from bothering her and Roza too much. A little fun was fun. But not hands where she didn’t want them, when she didn’t want them.

It was a tight ship where Ekeziel was concerned, which usually meant an easy night. They only had to nudge the right direction. Except the job had gone sideways when the mark had been led like a lamb down into one of the deeper tunnels. Not a problem until it was a problem, and Esper had grabbed Roza’s hand and pulled them in the same direction.

They’d seen it all.

Now he was where the woman had unceremoniously dumped him, twitching and moaning a little as the drug worked its way through his system. Esper sat close by, legs crossed, chin rested in her hands. She lulled in the strength of his fear, half-glazed with it, reading the same bit of graffiti on the wall over his head a dozen times over. All ye who sin.

Tactile buckles and leather made up most of her outfit. Heavy boots and fishnets. A sequined jacket hung loose from her shoulders. She glanced at Roza. "How long will it take?"